


Where the Day Finds Us

by significantowl



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cabins, Catholicism, Elektra Lives, F/M, Holidays (mentioned), POV Elektra Natchios, POV Matt Murdock, Post-Season/Series 02, Road Trips, What-If, Wherever You Run I Run with You
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:59:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/significantowl/pseuds/significantowl
Summary: The border crossing was a breeze. Elektra spoke French to the customs official, letting a tear come to her eye when stating the nature of their visit to Canada - a family funeral, on her side. Matthew handed over the passport she’d arranged for him, with its nice, innocuous travel history, hastily pulled off his sunglasses at the official’s request, and gave a friendly but tired smile when they were sent on their way - fittingly, since it was well after midnight.Through the darkness, Elektra drove.Matt, Elektra, and the world north of 116th Street.





	Where the Day Finds Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_silver_sun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_silver_sun/gifts).



> Written for a-silver-sun as part of the 2017 MattElektra Secret Santa exchange on tumblr.

The border crossing was a breeze. Elektra spoke French to the customs official, letting a tear come to her eye when stating the nature of their visit to Canada - a family funeral, on her side. Matthew handed over the passport she’d arranged for him, with its nice, innocuous travel history, hastily pulled off his sunglasses at the official’s request, and gave a friendly but tired smile when they were sent on their way - fittingly, since it was well after midnight.

Through the darkness, Elektra drove.

Even when they’d cleared the mountains, even when the world opened up into sprawling fields and sleeping farmsteads, there were very few stars to be seen. The clouds hung too heavy for that. Elektra put her foot to the floor, and the engine thrummed like the heartbeat of a tiger. If a deer or anything else wild and stupid wanted to try and cross the road and test her instincts, well, so be it; a little sport would liven up the night. Keep them all on their toes.

She’d wondered if Matthew would sleep during the drive. It would have been nice to see him relax to that extent, but so far, he’d given no sign that he might. He sat with his back very straight and his head tipped against the leather headrest. His fingers fiddled with a crease at the knee of his jeans again and again, until he sensed her attention - perhaps Elektra had turned her head slightly - and they stilled.

Matthew reached for her a beat later, and Elektra folded their hands together, settling them on her thigh. “Montreal is fifty-eight kilometers away,” she said. “We should reach it in a little over an hour.”

She had a charming little suite there, and the city was interesting enough for a few nights. There were no fewer than five restaurants she was dying to take Matthew to, just to watch the war between hedonistic delight and self-indulgent guilt play out across his face. And there was strategy involved: it made sense not to fly out of the nearest airport to Hell’s Kitchen, because surely the Hand would have their eyes on La Guardia, JFK, and every private hangar in the five boroughs.

More strategy: keeping Matthew’s feet on the ground for at least the first forty-eight hours. Let him succeed at running before forcing him to fly. 

“The way you drive?” Matthew snorted. “I should put my coat and gloves on now.” He was quiet for a moment before adding, haltingly, “What if - what if we don’t go there.”

Her pulse stuttered in response, staccato, but Elektra didn’t mind; so what if he knew his words had weight? Hers did, too. It would be a terrible thing if they were to each other no more than pebbles skimming across a lake. 

_(What if… from now on, if we make it… wherever you run, I run with you?_

_You're not serious,_ she'd said. _You love New York,_ she'd said, because Elektra always knew how to take the measure of an opponent.)

“If you want to turn back, we’ll turn back.” She'd prepared the words in advance, for the possibility of this very moment, so they came out swiftly and easily; such was the virtue of prior planning. “We’ll make the Hand sorry to see us coming.”

“No. That's not what I meant.” Surprise prompted Elektra to turn her eyes from the road, and take in Matthew's profile - in particular, the dear, stubborn jut of his jaw. “What if we just - keep going.”

“Do you have another destination in mind?”

His fingers flexed in hers. He said, “Not really. Just, you know. Maybe I'm too much of a city boy. Maybe it's time I learned some new tricks.”

The set of his chin was achingly familiar. _Go on, go on, hit me harder,_ it said. _I can take it. Hit me._

She didn't simply know it by sight. She knew the _feeling_ , deep in her muscle memory, coursing in her blood. When she was a child it would come out in a wordless yell, in a flurry of fists; letting it out was always the key. Using it to make someone else ache.

“Mm, you know I love all your tricks. Particularly the ones where clothing is optional,” Elektra said, earning her a warm, startled laugh from Matthew. She squeezed his hand. “What if I drive until dawn, and wherever the day finds us, that’s where we’ll be?”

“I love the way you think,” he said, and they sped on through the darkness, hand in hand.

::

Matt swung his legs out of the rental car and tested the ground beneath his feet. Slick ice over uneven gravel: for better or for worse, it was about what he’d expected. The longer Elektra drove, the colder the air outside grew, infiltrating the car, seeping in through the window glass, whistling through cracks in the machine. As the tires crunched over patches of packed snow, salt and brine pelted the undercarriage, and Elektra’s driving changed, slowing but becoming no less confident, as if she’d been behind the wheel many times in conditions far worse.

Perhaps she had. Matt, for his part, might not have spent a lot of time in ice-covered gravel parking lots, but deathtrap sidewalks were a fact of his city-boy life, and from there it was all a matter of extrapolation. One hand on the hood. Small steps. Then a hand on Elektra’s arm and steps taken together, until at last they pushed through the door of the roadside diner and were welcomed by a blast of heated air and the trademark early-morning aromas of brewing coffee and frying bacon.

A woman’s voice came from across the room, telling them, in French, to sit wherever they liked; replying, “Merci,” Matt and Elektra made their way to a booth at the far end of a long, narrow room. Most of the other customers had taken stools at the counter, close to a softly humming television set - sound muted, closed captioning probably on - and to the waitress with her pot of coffee.

“Un menu,” Matt said when she arrived at their table, before she could fumble her way through the question he knew was coming. “Et deux cafés. Sucre et crème.”

Easy. Easy. City or country, New York or northern Quebec. People were people; breakfast was breakfast.

After they ate - Elektra tearing through a platter of silver dollar pancakes dripping with syrup and butter, Matt taking a more measured approach with his two-egg omelet and whole wheat toast - Matt leaned back against the crackly vinyl booth and listened to Elektra tap away at the pay-as-you-go phone she’d bought in a gas station outside Montreal.

In the windowsill to his left, a string of holiday lights fizzled gently, one hundred tiny points of warmth. Beyond them lay the parking lot, and beyond that, a strip of highway, where vehicles passed at jarringly random intervals. Three minutes might go by, or six, or ten, before a small pocket of life hurtled past once again.

“See anything promising?” Matt asked, after the waitress had come and gone, topping up their mugs. The coffee wasn’t all that great, cheap grounds, harshly brewed, but that in itself made it comfortably familiar. More importantly, it was hot, and strong. It had been a long time since Matt's head had touched a pillow.

Elektra sighed. “Nothing with a jacuzzi tub in a hundred mile radius,” she said, “but I suppose that was to be expected. I believe I’ve found a cabin that will do. It calls itself a chalet, although it looks nothing like one, save being perched on a mountainside.”

“We'll survive without a jacuzzi.”

“Yes, I'm sure we will. But there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun while you survive, Matthew. Haven't I taught you that yet?” She had the phone to her ear now, and it was ringing. 

A big truck rumbled into the parking lot, an eighteen-wheeler reeking of diesel exhaust. The driver wasn't in a hurry to get out of the cab; taking a moment to text a loved one, perhaps. The truck’s radio was playing a pop song sung in French, one whose tune Matt didn't recognize at all. He listened to it rather than Elektra’s conversation with the person who owned the cabin without a jacuzzi. The cabin perched on the side of a mountain a thousand miles north of 116th Street, give or take a few.

You lived, and you learned. And Matt thought he had: thought he’d gotten things all figured out, thought he had his path. 

Cities were easier to love than people. Cities didn’t leave. And Matt thought - Matt thought he was concrete poured onto earth, steel sunk into rock. Thought he’d mastered the trick of loving one back.

It wouldn’t be the first time Matt had been wrong.

“It’s all arranged,” Elektra said, setting her phone on the table. “Key-code lock, he'll never need to see our faces. Nearly done with your coffee?”

Matt tipped the mug back and let the dregs sting his throat, before reaching across the table for Elektra’s hand. “Ready when you are.”

You lived, and you learned new tricks.

::

White, white, and more endless, boring white, far as the eye could see. From a tactical standpoint, the fact that no tracks - human or otherwise - marred the snow in front of the cabin counted as a plus, but there was something horribly suffocating about the blanket of white, and Elektra felt a tremendous urge to mess it up. 

The moment they'd stepped from the car, Matthew’s head had quirked. When Elektra had asked what the pointer dog routine was all about, he'd said, “Let's just try to avoid meeting the neighbors.”

“Oh? Assassins, bears, or a family with screaming children? I know which I’d prefer.” No question. Bring on the assassins. A little skirmish in the woods, a little red in the snow. She was ready.

“Bears. Sorry.”

“Shouldn’t they be hibernating?”

“You're asking me? Maybe they are, I don’t know. All I know is the smell,” he’d said. “And I’m basing that on a field trip to the zoo fifteen years ago.” 

A well-stocked wood bin stood to the left of the front door, and a boot scraper shaped like a moose’s head to the right. The door itself was the red of a ripe apple - or a pierced vein - and Elektra sighed upon glancing at the lock. Such a simple mechanism. The property manager was a trusting soul.

It was bitterly cold on the porch, but once she'd entered the code and opened the door, Matthew caught her around the waist and stopped her before she could enter. Excitement shot through her - had he sensed something she hadn’t? - but she discarded the idea almost immediately: there was no urgency to his movements. It was more as if they had returned to a time long ago, when Matthew had scooped her up in his arms before they crossed the threshold into a mobster’s house. 

Before they crossed a threshold in their relationship.

Oh, she’d planned for change, way back then, but when it came it certainly hadn’t fallen in line with her plans. She'd made her battlefield mistakes, and she’d learned. The brightness burning at Matthew’s core was something she would never underestimate - or wish away - again.

This time, he didn't pick her up. Smoothing a hand over her hair, Matthew kissed her, fingers lingering on her cheek when he drew back. “Thank you,” he said. “For this. Thank you for letting me try.”

The cabin held one main room, outfitted with all the rustic lodge trimmings: A massive leather sofa draped with a red-and-black buffalo plaid blanket. A wooden sleigh bed mounded with pillows and spread with another buffalo plaid monstrosity. There was a kitchen nook with granite countertops, and a flagstone hearth with a glassed-in wood-burning stove. It was a world away from her bolt-hole in Montreal, or indeed from any of the beautiful spaces she’d carved out for herself around the world. Four log walls and nothing but a field of snow and a silent forest beyond: Elektra looked at Matthew’s tight, stoic face, and wondered which of them would lose their minds first. 

The answer was obvious, of course. Elektra simply needed to bide her time until Matthew had proven his point to himself. Then she could _explode_.

Matthew headed straight for the bed, shedding layers in his wake until he was down to jeans and a long sleeved tee. Elektra thought briefly about their bags in the car, but her body was equally weary and the bed, though styled with dubious taste, looked soft. 

Beneath the sheets, Matthew wrapped his arms around her, spreading his palms wide over her stomach, over the place where Nobu’s sword had come so close to hitting home. Elektra knew precisely what Matthew was doing even if he didn’t, and wondered how long it would be before his body stopped instinctively checking to be sure that she was whole. “I think you should know, these sheets are _covered_ in rampaging moose,” she said, and his laugh was the last thing she heard before falling asleep.

When Elektra woke, it was to ice in her veins and a chill in her bones. It took her back in time once again, this time even further into the past, to the kind of cold that took years to banish completely.

She got out of bed.

Before they'd slept, Elektra had found the thermostat and nudged it upwards, but the gas heating was proving to be far from enough. That fireplace wasn't decorative; it was a necessity. She pulled on her shoes and coat, and opened the front door. 

When Elektra returned from the porch with her arms full of firewood, Matthew was standing in the center of the room, arms crossed, rubbing his hands over his biceps vigorously. As she approached, he moved quickly over to the hearth and skimmed his hand along the glass door of the wood stove. Finding the handle, he slid it back.

Elektra began laying firewood in precise tiers, placing the heartwood kindling she'd found at the top of her well-ordered pyramid. When she was done, she stood and pulled a match box down from the mantel; kneeling again, she found Matthew at her side, running his hands over her carefully arranged logs, a slight look of wonder on his face. “I would never have thought of stacking it like this,” he said, touched one of her cross-pieces, “but this is going to burn perfectly, isn't it.”

“It should.” Elektra struck the match, started the fire, sat back on her heels. “When I was very little, we only had this. The most basic kind of heat. My arms were short, and I couldn't carry much at all, but I was fast. I made my trips to and from the woodpile very quickly. I built a lot of fires, and kept them fed.”

Matthew reached for her then, and Elektra pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa and tucked it snugly around them. “That was before Stick?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“I don't know much about that part of your life.”

“It's no secret, darling,” she said, patting his hand. “But it _is_ boring. I prefer sticking to the highlights.” 

“Today will make the list for sure, then,” he said dryly, and Elektra laughed.

Her attention lingered on Matthew’s hand, the coarse, rough calluses he wore, a perfect echo of the ones his father would've worn when he was a little boy. Did he think about that when he rubbed his own knuckles, and heard the dry rasp of thickened skin?

Of course he did. And castigated himself for it, too. Because the father Matthew worshipped had only wanted him to live as half of himself.

Lifting his hand, Elektra kissed the roughened valley of Matthew’s palm, and smiled when he smiled.

The four square walls were terrible, the blank white landscape outside horrific. Elektra poured her attention into better things: the fire in its grate, crackling, burning, changing, _living_. The steady beat of Matthew’s heart when she rested her head on his chest. Strong, but still so tender. No wonder; he gave it a beating every day.

He understood what she'd done, Elektra thought - not simply with the fire she’d built, but with the story she’d told. I know how to live a dozen different lives, she'd said. Lives without caviar, without champagne, without jacuzzi tubs; I know how to survive them all. I've lived them. Just like you.

_Unlike_ dear Matthew, Elektra knew how to be perfectly honest with herself about the trappings of life she preferred. Silk sheets for no other reason than that she _enjoyed_ them - simple as that. Soft-ripened Camembert, aged Mezcal, beluga caviar - life could be lived without them. But life _with_ them could be so, so sweet.

But Matthew could learn. And watching one hang-up after another shatter and and fall away would forever give her joy. It was good for Matthew, too, she knew it. He craved that release the same way he craved the shock of landing a blow, Elektra thought. Viscerally, deeply. 

The world waited beyond the mountains, closer, despite their isolation, than ever before. And out there - 

Out there, they would live. They would burn.

::

The nearest town - village, really - was about twenty minutes away, down a winding mountain road. The main shopping street was narrow, and by Matt's reckoning, held about two block’s worth of businesses; the entire community felt smaller in size than Central Park, and quieter too. Elektra parked in front of a small corner shop that was part gas station, part grill, and part grocery store. All they’d found to eat in the cabin was a package of stale shortbread cookies. The search for more food - _decent_ food, Elektra had said, _edible_ food - had brought them here.

As far as grocery shopping went, Matt was best with the fresh stuff, and he'd thought he would take care of the produce and meat while Elektra dealt with the things in jars and boxes. But out on the slushy sidewalk, hand on Elektra’s arm, he paused, caught by the sound of church bells.

“There they go, Matthew,” Elektra said. “Playing your song.”

“Yeah. Yeah. They kind of are.” Down the street, inside the church, the seats were filling. Neighbors greeting neighbors, friends greeting friends. Five o’clock Mass on the third Sunday of Advent. Gaudete Sunday. Christmas was little more than a week away.

“Go,” Elektra said softly. “I'll be there when you’re done.”

He took a seat in a rear pew, next to a woman smelling of cocoa butter lotion and vitamin C drops who rose and knelt like her knees had seen better days. The priest had a warm, scratchy voice that fell on the ear like a well-worn record. Matt's French was rougher around the edges than his Spanish, but he soon found it didn't matter. The liturgy was in his bones; language was just a suit of clothes. 

Faith had no borders. Love was boundless. Didn't he belong everywhere, with God?

Couldn't he belong anywhere, with Elektra?

The homily was more difficult for Matt to follow than other parts of the Mass, but he knew that the priest was talking about joy. Gaudete in Domino semper. _Rejoice in the Lord always._ Easier said than done, Matt thought, but then again, weren't most things? Sometimes it felt like joy was a place he’d been banished from. Or, no - a place that had only existed in the past, in brief, flickering, snapshot moments, and when he’d been privileged enough to live there, he’d barely realized where he was.

_And again, I say, rejoice._

If it was hard - so what? Since when had that been enough reason to give up?

Soon the notes of the final hymn rose up, plaintive and familiar, filling Matt's chest just as they always had as they swelled toward the rafters. The organ was smaller than he was used to, its pipes less sonorous, and the sound reflected differently off a low timber ceiling than a high, vaulted stone one, but the _feeling_ \- that was the same. 

_O viens vers nous Emmanuel_ , the congregation sang. _O come, o come Emmanuel_ , Matt sang, and no one seemed to mind.

On his way out of the church, Matt gently held the arm of the cocoa butter lady. She'd been worried about Matt finding his way, and since he’d had his own concerns about how well her creaky knees would handle the church steps, he’d bitten back an instinctive thanks-but-no-thanks reply and taken her elbow.

She clung tightly to the handrail, and Matt provided careful stability on her other side, hoping to God the entire time that he didn't hit a slick spot and slip himself. Eventually, they made it safely down to the sidewalk. “Someone should be waiting for me over there,” Matt said in French, gesturing to where he knew Elektra stood, a beautifully warm spot in a cold night.

She was near the church gate, just as she’d said she’d be. Snowflakes drifted down lightly from above, brushing her cheeks and nestling in her hair with the barest of whispers. The cocoa butter lady patted Matt’s hand and told him to wish his beautiful friend a Merry Christmas; he promised that he would, and wished the woman one in return.

Unfurling his cane, he went to meet Elektra. Her breath was soft in her chest, soft as the falling snow, and Matt knew it must be leaving clouds of white in the air, just like the ones he'd entertained himself by making when he was young. Matt listened, not yet speaking, and in that moment, things didn't seem so difficult after all. 

The sound, the warmth, the simple, phenomenal _fact_ of Elektra’s breath when it had come so close to being gone forever - that was joy.

He cleared his throat. “Hey. So. You ready to hit the road?” 

“How adorable of you to even ask.” Elektra took his hand, and Matt soaked up the warmth of her, right through her slim leather glove. “Yes, _please_. Let’s go eat cheese and drink wine. Assuming it all hasn’t frozen solid in the car by now.”

“I hope you got something a little more filling than just cheese and wine,” Matt said, to which Elektra made a noncommittal noise. He supposed he’d just have to wait and see.

Hand in hand, they left the little church behind. Tomorrow, maybe, they would leave behind Quebec, or all of Canada, or the entire continent of North America. The land under his feet might be fundamentally disconnected from the ground beneath New York. 

So what if was hard.

Another new day; another new trick. Matt’s fingers were laced tightly through Elektra’s, fitting together just as they’d done a decade - a lifetime - ago. He’d already learned, hadn’t he?

You could leave without leaving forever.

You could leave, and come back.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi at [tumblr](http://significantowl.tumblr.com)! My inbox is always open to mattelektra prompts; I hoard them and write them sporadically :-)


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